Psa. 73:26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
As much as things seem to change they never really do. I was struck recently reading one of Martin Luther’s sermons from the 1500’s. He was expressing frustration that the people in church were treating the presence of the Lord in church as common or ordinary. He sounded like he was in utter shock. How could anyone treat this amazing being, the Holy Spirit as just insignificant. Jonathan Edwards experienced a similar feeling in the 1700’s, he couldn’t believe it when his church became apparently bored with the fact that God was in their midst. He preached a sermon about the happiness we have in God’s presence as a response to their apparent apathy. Here is an excerpt from that sermon.
“The river that supplies the city of God, is a full and never-failing stream: there is enough, and it never is dry. And they that trust in God, and whose hope the Lord is, they shall be like trees “planted by the waters that spreads forth her roots, and shall not see when heat comes, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, nor shall cease from yielding fruit”. God has promised that he will never fail them, nor forsake them. The people that has God amongst them, they have the fountain of all good in the midst of them. There is a full fountain, indeed an inexhaustible and infinite fountain, enough for the supply of everyone, under all their circumstances and necessities: whatever anyone wants, he may go to this fountain, and there he may have a supply. Such a people that have this God amongst them, may glory in him, and say, “The Lord is our shepherd; we shall not want…”
At the end of the day we are all only looking for happiness. The stunning thing about our Christian faith, it is the source of all of our happiness, not the experiences or possessions of this world. It’s not a new car (or in Edwards day, a new horse), or a new job, or moving to another city, or finding a new church. That may be where we begin our search but our joy, the kind that lasts, can only be found in Him. Don’t let yourself be counted among those who are bored and treat the Lord’s presence as common. You can be one that lives in stunned silence in His presence.
